Penitent Saint Jerome

Plague reached Seville in 1649 and killed something close to half the city within a year. Zurbaran was in his fifties, his commissions were thinning as the younger Murillo took over the Seville market, and it was around then that he painted this Jerome. The saint kneels bare-chested in the desert with a skull and his lion beside him, a crucifix in one hand and in the other the stone he beats against his own chest, which is exactly the sort of penitential subject the Spanish church wanted after the Council of Trent. The canvas left Spain with Marshal Soult during the Peninsular War and reached Montargis in 1853 through his family. In June 2016 the river Loing flooded the museum while building work was going on. At 170 centimetres tall the painting was too big to carry out in time, and bringing it back took two years of restoration.